1. Field of the Invention
Illustrative embodiments of the present invention relate to an image processing system, and more specifically, to an image processing system capable of acquiring a plurality of pieces of data dispersed-among a plurality of servers to draw images on a plurality of sub-regions of a draw region.
2. Description of the Background
A conventional system architecture is known in which, when tomograms taken using a plurality of computer tomography (CT) apparatuses are stored in a remote server as JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)2000 files, a plurality of personal computers (PCs) is capable of displaying a high-resolution and high-quality image in a region of interest (ROI) of a tombgram by separately accessing respective packets of the JPEG2000 files. However, no description is given of how the system architecture operates when portions of such an image in the ROI to a user are dispersed among a plurality of servers.
A conventional multicarrier transceiver synchronously displays a plurality of contents by synchronizing multiple applications to transmit video, sound, and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) data, and is used for the broadcast of such contents. Although the multicarrier transceiver synchronizes independent information sources, such as motion picture, sound, and ATM data, the multicarrier transceiver is not configured to access only certain desired content portions in accordance with a user's request like a client/server model.
Similarly, as one example of use of Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML), an operation procedure of Google Maps (trademark) is described at a Web page (http://www.openspc2.org/JavaScript/Ajax/GoogleMaps/index.html). For this example, when GIF (graphic interchange format) image data of an area located at a geographic location (x,y) is stored on a server, JavaScript allows a web browser, such as Internet Explorer (trademark), to access an image(s) of an area requested by a user and display the image(s) at a desired resolution in GIF. In such a case, since the user's requested area does not necessarily consist of a single image, the web browser accesses a plurality of images in a sequential manner.
In the above-described web-page document, images representing a geographic location are sequentially accessed in the main-scan direction and the sub-scan direction. Consequently, if one of a plurality of servers or a network linking the plurality of servers goes down when a client is accessing an image, the client is forced into a wait state even when servers storing subsequent images are operable, resulting in reduced availability. Further, since the images representing each location are created in GIF format without tiling or precinct division, redundant portions of GIF images may be transmitted through a communication path depending on a relation in horizontal and vertical sizes between each GIF image and a display area, resulting in reduced transmission efficiency. Further, the upper limit of 256 colors in the number of color components may be a constraint on color reproducibility of the original image, and other disadvantages such as unavailability of multi-layer structure may appear with respect to image quality.
IS15444-9 “Information technology—JPEG 2000 image coding system—Part 9: Interactivity tools, APIs and protocols” describes a method of interactively accessing an ROI for a user in a JPEG2000 file stored on a server. However, although IS15444-9 defines a request-and-response procedure between a client and a server, it has no description of a method of seamlessly accessing files associated with content that is dispersed among multiple servers.